1879.] NOTES FROM THE PAPERS. 203 



don evening contemporary on the subject of "Enjoyable Gardens : " "Horti- 

 culture is a misnomer for viniculture. Instead of a ramble along greensward 

 in the free air, laden with fresh scents, he traverses weary miles of glass-cov- 

 ered walks of brick, in an artificial languorous atmosphere, surrounded by 

 flower-pots and water-pipes. The whole thing is only a shade less distasteful 

 and tiresome than a laboratory. Perhaps, in addition to this enthusiasm for 

 glass, the host has a passion for Latin names, which he insists on inflicting on 

 men who neither know nor care about the niceties of floral classification. This 

 horticultural pedantry is particularly disgusting, because it really gives no 

 single atom of instruction, and has no single element of suggestive knowledge 

 about it to those who have not been trained in the subject. And you mostly 

 find, too, that the horticultural amateur, who is most tediously particular about 

 his Latin names for things, has the least possible knowledge of the general 

 ideas that belong to the study of botany. His knowledge is all empirical ; it 

 has no growth in his mind, and only consists of a bundle of detached and dis- 

 connected labels. Botany, rightly studied, is one of the most instructive and 

 useful, as well as one of the most delightful, of all the concrete sciences, be- 

 cause it is so simple and so perfect an example of a truly scientific classification. 

 But your hue horticulturist, all glass and Latin as he is, extracts as little as 

 possible of the true worth of his study from his vast legions of flower-pots and 

 specimens and labels. One wonders why these people, who bore one to death 

 with the special names of this flower and that, do not insist on letting you 

 know the exact name of the Grapes, Strawberries, and Cherries at dessert, all 

 in botanical dog-Latin. Of all impostors, vitriculturists seem to be the most 

 egregious. They are endured, and their tribes wax more numerous, because 

 they offer a good opening for that vulgar ostentation which is so charming a 

 feature of our society." 



'The Gardeners' Chronicle,' which is rather credulous on the subject of 

 "sports" and suchlike, gives prominence to the following paragraph bor- 

 rowed from the 'Philosophical Transactions,' 1720 (!) : "About six years 

 since," says a Mr Henry Cave, "I planted against a wall a cutting from a 

 Muscadine Vine, on an eastern aspect, where it has the sun from its rise till 

 half an hour after twelve. The soil is a stiff clay ; but to make it work the 

 better, I meliorated it by mixing some rubbish of the foundation of an old 

 brick wall, where it now grows. Two years since it shot out at both ends, 

 about 22 inches of a side, before it came to a joint. That on the right was a 

 very luxuriant, exuberant branch, as large as the body of the tree, the other 

 side not half so thick ; and the leaves on the right were as large again as those 

 on the left, and I fancy the largest that ever were seen. The right hand bears 

 a very large and good black Grape, and large bunches ; the left hand very good 

 white Grapes, and I had last year more bunches of the white than of the black ; 

 and whereas in all Vines bearing black and blue Grapes the leaves die red, 

 these died white on the black side as well as the other. Last January 1 

 pruned the tree again, but tacked up more of the right hand (being black) 

 than I did on the left, for which reason I had this year a great many more of 

 the black than I had of the white, and they ripened for the season of the year 

 very well. I gathered the last about eight days since (October 23), and the 

 leaves die white this year also, being the second year of bearing." Parallels 

 to the " Culford Apparition " take some hunting up ! 



It has been proved by repeated trials at Chiswick and elsewhere that a large 

 proportion of the names in vegetable catalogues are simply synonyms. In 

 other words, many of the names in seed-lists do not represent distinct or new 



